@alex_m1, thank you. The Spansion angle you pointed out is an interesting one. Now that former Fujitsu Semi's microcontroller business is a part of Spansion, Spansion has a vested interest in promoting mruby.

I hear the maker community in Japan is actually growing strong. I haven't had a chance to investigate more first hand, but that's what I hear from my colleagues working at EE times Japan.

Oh! Sorry that we missed you last week! Space Codesign was exhibiting at EDS Fair (combined with ET) as part of our Asian distributor, Avant Technology. We would have loved to give you a demo of our SpaceStudio ESL hardware/software co-design EDA tool. We had a great reception among Japanese companies for our debut, as Japan is arguably the one of the most advanced C-based hardware and systems market on the planet.

Personally, it was my first time in Japan (after all these years, after all those air miles!) and it will definitely not be my last ... :)